Hand tongs are used on a drilling rig for gripping drill pipe or other tubulars. Drilling personnel manoeuvre the hand tongs by gripping and pulling handles on the tong which allow the tong to open and close. Accidents occur in which workers gripping the tong handles have sustained crushed hands or fingers. Referring to FIG. 1, a drilling rig hand tong 10 known in the prior art is shown, in this prior art device, tong 10 includes handle 12 that can be gripped by a worker's hand (not shown), and jaw 14 to grip drill pipe and other tubulars (not shown). Handle 12 includes a protruding rounded top boundary 16 and a protruding rounded bottom boundary 18.
It is known in the art to attach a hand guard to the tong to protect the hands of the workers. However, these existing prior art hand guards will only fit on particular types of hand tong handles, and are difficult to install and remove.
For the safety of the personnel working on the drilling rig, it is desirable to provide a hand protection method and a hand guard suitable for retrofitting onto existing hand tongs, where the installation of the hand guard is simplified.